Lots of moaning ahead I’m afraid on the changes that have been made with the new Buffy comics

[frelling_tralk]

'Buffy the Vampire Slayer': Jordie Bellaire, Jeanine Schaeffer Talk Taking the "Ultimate Marvel" Approach to the New Series

JB: I think me and Jeanine when we first started talking about the project, we both talked about how we both love Willow. I think Willow definitely has a lot of charm being this sweet, quiet, bookish girl, but she really

Comments

[tabaqui]

Wow, yeah, that's...just so not right, at all. Meh.

I have seen the art before, and really like it ,but....meh.

[frelling_tralk]

It’s just strange isn’t it?! I suppose I can understand wanting to do a modern reboot and bring the characters back to high school, but I’m not sure why there’s a need to so fundamentally change very popular characters like Willow, Spike, and Drusilla. Next thing you know, they’ll be introducing a slayer called Faith as a shy and awkward bookworm, and why exactly are you calling your new character Faith when they’re not modelled after the original character at all?

[tabaqui]

Yes, it seems really pointless. Why not just do new characters, rather than utterly changing the old ones?

[frelling_tralk]

With Drusilla especially I think it would have made a lot more sense to create a brand new character as a female spin on the Master, instead saying that she’s the Mistress and Drusilla at the same time is a combination that just makes no sense

[rogueslayer452]

Yeah, I wasn't onboard when I heard that they were rebooting the comics and putting them back in high school with a Gen Z-twist or something like that. Because really, what's the point? I never understood why anytime something is remade they want to go, "but we're remaking it for modern audiences!" as if audiences now cannot understand something from the 90s or even further back. It makes it seem like they think that younger audiences are stupid to not understand something that predates cell phones or social media

[frelling_tralk]

Badfic is exactly what it sounds like to me as well, in some of these cases the writers are just making up character traits as they see fit

[rogueslayer452]

Exactly, everything you wrote.

Also, what you said in the post:

That’s one of the most bizarre changes to me in fact, it’s meant to be more inclusive to use neutral pronouns I guess, but the whole concept of Buffy from the beginning was celebrating female power?

The more I think about it, the less sense it makes to change it. I mean, I also get probably wanting to be more inclusive with being neutral and everything, but it really doesn't make sense when, aside from the whole aspect of the series was about the power of women, the prophecy itself in-verse was created by the Watcher's Council who were entirely patriarchal. Which was what made the whole point of Buffy rejecting and refusing the Watcher's Council in the first place so incredibly important, not to mention the importance of everything in the series finale when all Potential Slayers ended up becoming Slayers. So wouldn't having this gender neutral prophecy (or a version of a prophecy like that) make more sense if it was already following an established canon post-Chosen?

[frelling_tralk]

Honestly yes, I don’t see how it can be considered an improvement to remove ‘one girl in all the world’ when that’s so tied in with how Joss originally envisioned the show. Even the changes to the Master and Drusilla remove a lot of Joss’s original intentions. This is one of my fav videos for showing how Bts handled the patriarchy https://youtu.be/1jKYm4GpTvw (watch it, it’s awesome! ) Yes it’s probably more cool and modern to replace the Master with a female villain, it’s probably cooler to not have Drusilla as the insane and ruined victim of Angelus, it’s probably cooler to have Willow secure in herself from the very beginning, but there was a purpose behind those choices. Giving us updated and more traditional badass female characters with a female Mistrass who keeps Spike as her pet makes for a fun villain, but also doesn’t exactly capture the power and meaning of the original story and why so many connected with it

[ragnarok_08]

Yeah, the reboot comics definitely leave much to be desired.

[frelling_tralk]

I’m certainly not a fan of some of these changes

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Friday, January 25

[livejournal]

User rbfvid referenced to your post from The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Friday, January 25 saying: [...] Discussions] Commentary on Jordie Bellaire & Jeanine Schaeffer interview on BtVS reboot comics [...]

[perpetual]

This sounds terrible. Through and through.

[frelling_tralk]

Heh it is a bit ironic that them attempting to promote the comic is what’s turning some of us off even more! I really feel like they’re missing an essential part of what made those characters interesting though if they want to skip straight ahead to badass witch Willow, or talk about Spike as William. You need to start off with the insecure and shy Willow in order to get to why she got carried away with magic and power. You need to start with the arrogant and cocky Spike before you reveal that a lot of that started off as posturing and a reinvention of his human self. Talking instead about poor put-upon Spike, or confident Willow who speaks her mind, that’s taking away all of the layers that made those characters interesting in the first place

And Drusilla sounds like a completely different character anyway, so there’s that.

[perpetual]

Kind of represents the whole problem with reboots, huh? They want the built-in audience but they don't want to do any of the work that was put into the original to make it great.

[frelling_tralk]

:nods: That’s exactly how it comes across to me, that they just want to use the Buffy names (and the actors likeness) so that they have a build-in audience, but what they are really wanting to do is tell their own storyline with a brand new modern slayer and her friends. And that’s absolutely fine, but then why not just call it a slayer spin-off?! It’s not exactly a Buffy reboot if you begin by changing the characters so much so that Willow Rosenbaum is walking around dressed up in the sort of midriff bearing outfits that Buffy was unsuccessfully trying to convince her to wear as a costume on Halloween by telling her that it’s a come as you aren’t night